Sanitation dumps Scarlata

The Oceanside Sanitation District voted to end a contract with Assistance Corp., a company headed by former Supervisor Michael Scarlata, at its meeting on Dec. 3.

The vote was 3-1, with Commissioner Ed Scharfberg making the motion and his colleagues John Mannone and Tom Lanning voting to end the contract and stop its payments. Scharfberg said the motion was based on a review by the district’s legal counsel. Commissioner Florence Mensch abstained.

Earlier this year, a state comptroller’s audit revealed that Scarlata and his son, Charles, collected $800,000 in retirement benefits in addition to their salaries. Audits in 2009 by the Nassau County Comptroller’s office had similar findings.

The elder Scarlata received $391,000 in deferred payments from 1998 to 2013, after retiring in 1998 with a $75,000 annual pension. His son received $421,353 in payments in 2012 and 2013, after he retired. In addition, the comptroller determined that the district had entered into a series of contracts with Assistance Corp. in which Michael Scarlata received additional money. In July, the board approved a resolution, by a 3-2 vote, to suspend Scarlata and review his contract as well as the comptroller’s audit.

“The Board took no action on the previous two audits,” said Scharfberg. “The third time, the board finally took action.”

Lanning declined to comment on his vote. In September, he was the deciding vote against bringing in an outside law firm to review the Assistance Corporation contract.

Chairman Joe Cibellis was the lone dissenting vote. “I want to say that it’s a very complicated situation,” he said. “I’d like to end the drama with Sanitary [District] 7, and I don’t think that’s being financially responsible … My opinion is we’re under contract.”

Mensch abstained, she said, “because I didn’t really know what to do. I didn’t think about it enough, and at this point I just had to think about it, hear a little more about it.”

The vote was taken after the commissioners spent nearly three hours in executive session.

The contract, which began on Jan. 1, 2014, and was set to end on Dec. 31, 2018, was for $48,000 per year, or a total of $240,000.

Scarlata declined to comment.

Last month, former sanitation worker Joseph Samoles filed a lawsuit claiming that the sanitation board purposely failed to recover money it paid the Scarlatas, and seeking to reclaim it. The suit has been withdrawn, and Austin Graff, Samoles’s attorney, said that he and his client would reconsider it in light of the board’s vote.

“I congratulate Tom for voting his conscience,” Graff said of Lanning. “And thank you for voting with the community.”